Soccer superstar Lionel Messi recently launched his own collection of NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, created in his own image by an Australia-based digital designer that are set to raise billions of dollars.
In India, too, Bollywood superstar Amitabh Bachchan has launched his own NFTs that revolve around his life. Before him, Sunny Leone was the first Bollywood actress to launch her own NFT collection of unique, hand-animated art.
Messi, Big B and Leone are not alone in this business. The popularity of NFT, a type of digital asset, has skyrocketed in the last few years. NFT artwork is sold in the millions, attracting the attention of major brands, celebrities and icons.
What are NFTs?
Put simply, NFTs are digital assets that exist on a public blockchain that serves as proof of ownership. While everyone can see the articles, only the buyer of an NFT has the “official” status of its owner.
Unlike digital objects, which can be modified and reproduced endlessly, each NFT has its own digital footprint that makes it unique. All kinds of digital objects such as pictures, text, videos, music and even tweets can be converted into NFTs and this process is known as “minting” (yes, like in the world of cryptocurrencies).
Growing popularity
The fact that NFTs can provide buyers with a sense of “unique ownership” and “digital immortality” has opened up exciting opportunities for digital commerce and engagement.
Although it has existed since 2017, the popularity of NFTs only rose in 2021. According to DappRadar, a Lithuania-based data tracking company, the trading volume of top NFT collections like Axie Infinity, CryptoPunks and ArtBlocks increased by 300% and generated more than 1, $ 5 billion in sales.
Another report published in Forbes put NFT sales at over $ 1.2 billion – nearly half of the cumulative sales volume of $ 2.5 billion in the first two quarters of 2021 – while the dapp industry (decentralized Applications) recorded a total of more than 1.4 million unique users per day. 23.72% more than in the previous month.
Future opportunities
In the crypto world, the idea of integrating NFTs and e-commerce platforms has been making headlines for some time. Experts believe that due to their digital nature and long shelf life, NFTs can play a significant role in the world of e-commerce and the market for high-end products.
“As mixed reality technologies mature, normal people will spend more and more time – and therefore money – in virtual environments,” a research fellow at a French international banking group told a business channel.
Because NFTs are digital in nature, there are no problems or costs involved in shipping products (although a certain coinage and hosting fee must be paid to the marketplace that showcases the NFTs as collections).
Great opportunities await luxury brands that can potentially offer exclusive and limited NFTs without worrying about counterfeiting, as the metadata on the token cannot be changed by users.
Precautions
However, all good things come with certain challenges. And in the case of NFTs, copyright is one of them. As the market for NFT grows, cases of digital art that has been copied on the NFT platforms have emerged, requiring strict recourse to digital theft and modification.
Although some platforms like OpenSea and Nifty Gateway offer users the ability to report or file an appeal for copyright infringement in their terms of use, the lack of an official trademark makes it difficult for creators to make claims in the world of the internet.
The issue of cyber security also comes to mind as multiple users have reported hacked accounts and thousands of dollars’ worth of NFTs being stolen.
(The author, Samrat Kishor, is a Tech Strategy Consultant & Entrepreneur, Golden Next Ventures. The views are his own.)
source https://www.bisayanews.com/2021/09/12/nfts-nfts-why-you-should-pay-attention/
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